This post is a response to a question initially posed on Quora, and can also be accessed via “https://www.quora.com/Should-an-artist-have-a-day-job/answer/Antonio-Amaral-1“

An artist has more justification for surviving on their activity in society than most any other vocation.

Setting aside the mechanics of bias and economic pragmatism, the reality is that almost no other general field of employment engages the producers in their field the way art production does.

IOW. Almost no other field, in and of itself, engages people to eat, think, and breathe their work 24/7/365 as the arts do.

Sure, there are individuals within almost every profession who are as dedicated to succeeding in their chosen career. Most, however, are not interested in their activities for the sake of the activity itself.

For example, someone like Elon Musk developed a reputation early for being a workaholic. His motivation, however, was never the work itself but the material benefits he would derive from it. Many, if not most, executive-level people work at least 60 hours per week — which defines the word “work” rather loosely by contrast because “work” essentially involves social interaction. Both worlds of work and socialization are combined into one.

That’s not the case with artists unless one is a musician in a band, dancer, actor, or performer — an artist who produces their product as part of a group or troupe.

Visual artists, writers, and sculptors generally work alone and in isolation from the world — which works for that personality type. There are many more introverts in the world than many extroverts believe is the case. Writing code is another activity that demands solitude to be productive, for example, and this transformation into an information technology economy has been a boon for many.

Since writing code can also be considered an activity that produces creative output — such as designing and developing apps and sites — it can also be a vocation in which one receives their recompense on the result of their efforts within the products they create.

However, this also reinforces my point because many app designers/developers also live in poverty. The corporate machinery employs those who have become disengaged from the creative process in coding to such a degree that their motivation is job security, not creative output.

Artists should be free to create because the value of the arts to society is core to our humanity. One cannot master their artistic skills if they have to work at a job that chews up most of their time. Creativity requires as much dedicated focus as any profession and arguably provides more lasting value to society than most functional robot roles within dehumanizing institutions.

The issue is not “should an artist have a day job?” because most artists do many different things to survive and fit as much time for art as they can in between. The lucky few develop enough of a body of work to create opportunities to survive on their creative output alone but without any accompanying wealth. Most adjust well to poverty if they can concentrate on creative production full-time.

The attitude in this question is troublesome because it represents an unfortunately common toxic attitude of people who disrespect the arts on a fundamental level with an attitude that they should enjoy the arts for free. They want their cake and to eat it, too.

This is the second question I’ve seen posted on Quora within the last couple of weeks, which seeks to disparage the arts with a sociopathic disdain for the vocation. It’s an attitude that every artist endures throughout their life… and struggle with the disgusting mistreatment of people who are okay with benefitting from the artistic product but hate paying for it.

In my case, it’s very personal because I’m in the middle of a lawsuit against my own family for stealing work of mine and benefitting from it for decades while, if they had compensated me fair market value for it ten years ago, I would have recovered from an assault on my life. Instead, they chose to hire a crooked lawyer who has aided and abetted them in their crime while counselling them to commit perjury and deny me my lawful payment.

My attitude towards people who display such disgusting disrespect for the arts has evolved to become very unpleasant to deal with as a consequence of sustained encounters.

In my youth, when I was more able to respond to such sociopathic depravity with some humour, I would say that despite what is said about “that other profession,” the arts are the oldest profession.

After all, without the creative vision inherent within all of us as thinking and emoting human beings, we’d still be hanging out in caves.

Oh… and for the record (I’m not going put any effort into digging up this particular stat, but I will undervalue what I remember about it), for every dollar invested in the arts, society benefits by two dollars. Insofar as government investments go, it’s at the top of the list of best investments. Why do you think the wealthy class begins storing their value in artwork once they’ve reached a threshold of wealth where they need to put their money somewhere? Where better to put one’s money than in a 10 million dollar painting by Robert Rauschenberg that is guaranteed to be worth twenty within a decade?